Bertrand Piccard

Why organisations work with Bertrand Piccard

• The Solar Impulse Foundation’s portfolio of more than 1,000 independently certified, profitable environmental solutions gives organisations a verified, searchable evidence base – not an aspiration but a commercially assessed library of technologies available today, spanning energy, construction, mobility, agriculture, and industry.
• His “qualitative growth” framework – articulated in his book RÉALISTE – gives leaders a specific language for presenting sustainability to boards, investors, and governments as a source of economic development rather than a compliance cost. Few speakers can point to a named framework, a published thesis, and twenty years of testing it with heads of state and global executives.
• As a trained psychiatrist, Piccard applies behavioural insight to the structural reason sustainability arguments fail at decision-making level: not a lack of belief, but the absence of a financial narrative that aligns with existing incentive structures. His diagnosis is precise – and so is the alternative he offers.
• His advisory roles – Special Advisor to the European Commission and member of the European Investment Bank’s Climate and Environment Advisory Council – provide direct intelligence on the regulatory and financial frameworks that will shape corporate energy transition decisions this decade.
• The Solar Impulse round-the-world flight covered 43,000 km on commercially available solar technology alone. Organisations working through assumptions about what clean energy can realistically deliver hear this not as a metaphor but as an audit: the gap between what these technologies can do and what most boards believe they can do is not a future problem.

Biography highlights

• Completed the first non-stop round-the-world balloon flight, Breitling Orbiter 3, with Brian Jones (1999) – the longest flight in aviation history by both distance and duration at that time
• Co-initiated and piloted Solar Impulse: the first solar-powered aircraft to circumnavigate the globe (2016, 43,000 km, zero fuel), with André Borschberg
• Founder and Chairman, Solar Impulse Foundation – has certified more than 1,000 clean and profitable environmental solutions via the Solar Impulse Efficient Solution Label
• UN Champions of the Earth Award (2012, UNEP); UN Goodwill Ambassador for the Environment; Special Advisor to the European Commission; member, European Investment Bank Climate and Environment Advisory Council
• Mungo Park Medal, Royal Scottish Geographical Society (2018); Harmon Trophy; FAI Gold Air Medal; holds 22 FAI world records in solar and electric aviation categories
• Author of RÉALISTE, The Greatest Adventure, and Changer d’Altitude; keynote speaker at the United Nations, World Economic Forum, TED, and major UN Climate Change Conferences

Biography

The argument Bertrand Piccard has advanced for two decades is specific: ecology and economy are not opposites. Clean technology is where the next generation of industrial value is being created. His Solar Impulse Foundation has certified more than 1,000 profitable environmental solutions – available today – to demonstrate that the energy transition is already a market, not a future aspiration.

The Solar Impulse round-the-world flight – 43,000 km with zero fuel, completed with André Borschberg in 2016 – was designed to carry a message as much as a pilot. When Piccard landed in Abu Dhabi, the point was not the distance but the technology: every solar system and electric motor that had just circled the planet was commercially available. Most organisations had simply not been shown a coherent financial case for using it.

That case is the work of the Solar Impulse Foundation, which Piccard founded and chairs. The Foundation’s Efficient Solution Label certifies technologies, products, and processes across energy, construction, mobility, agriculture, and industry – providing governments, corporations, and investors with a vetted evidence base for capital and policy decisions. His advisory roles extend this work directly into policy: he is Special Advisor to the European Commission and a member of the European Investment Bank’s Climate and Environment Advisory Council, positions that give him current intelligence on the regulatory environment shaping energy transition this decade.

Trained as a psychiatrist, Piccard applies behavioural insight to the precise reason sustainability strategies fail at board level: the financial argument is missing. His book RÉALISTE sets out the case for his named framework – “qualitative growth” – as a practical alternative to both degrowth and unlimited consumption. The Climate Impulse project, a hydrogen-powered aircraft designed for a non-stop round-the-world flight, is his current proof-of-concept: another first, built to demonstrate what the next generation of clean technology can already do.

Key speaking topics

• Clean technology and the commercial case for energy transition
• Qualitative growth: sustainability as an economic strategy
• The Solar Impulse Efficient Solution Label and cleantech certification
• Climate policy, regulation, and the role of business
• Mission-driven leadership and the explorer’s mindset
• The psychology of organisational change and resistance to transition
• Hydrogen and the future of sustainable aviation

Ideal for

• Boards and C-suites working through the commercial and investment case for energy transition
• Chief Sustainability Officers and ESG leads under pressure to translate environmental commitments into language investors and boards will act on
• Government and policy audiences involved in clean energy planning, regulatory design, or climate target-setting
• Global executive leadership summits where the intersection of sustainability, growth strategy, and industrial policy is on the agenda

Audience outcomes

• A reframed understanding of the sustainability-profitability relationship – with a specific named framework, “qualitative growth,” that can be used internally to move the conversation forward
• Awareness of a verified portfolio of more than 1,000 commercially available clean technologies, and how the Solar Impulse Efficient Solution Label works as a practical decision-making tool
• A clear diagnosis of why sustainability arguments typically fail at board and investment level – and what to substitute for the standard cost-and-compliance framing
• Insight into the European and global regulatory and financial architecture that will shape energy transition investment decisions over the next decade
• A more precise distinction between sustainability as an organisational cost and sustainability as a source of new industrial markets – presented with the proof points to make that argument to investors, regulators, and governments